


Quiet

by asinineAbbreviations



Category: Thrilling Intent (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Light Angst, One Shot, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 02:18:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17540771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asinineAbbreviations/pseuds/asinineAbbreviations
Summary: Kyr Fiore wakes up alone.





	Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> I love Kyr Fiore.

The night came to an end, and the sun breached the windows of the house Kier was huddled in. When one of the rays shined on his face, he startled upright, shocked out of the not-sleep he'd fallen into. His heart raced - had been racing ever since he'd left his house that night. He hadn't been able to stop his mind churning. He wasn't sure if he'd ever sleep again.

There was a strange quiet, compared to the normal bustling noises that rang on the busy Grius mornings. Even with the - events - of the night it was still odd to hear absolutely nothing going on. Kier would've half-expected the owner of the house he was currently squatting in to barge down the stairs or through the door to come and yell at him. Instead, there was just an eerie atmosphere.

Something didn't seem right, he thought. He was missing something.

It clicked.

Kier leapt to his feet, stumbling over the debris he'd stocked up in front of himself the night before as a makeshift barricade and dashed to the entrance of the building. The door swung open, nearly torn off its hinges. A sign of a battle lay just beyond where he was standing, the ground scuffed and upheaved, black goo and - other bits - littered across the ground. He glanced around frantically.

"Hello?!" He yelled into the morning air. The sky was clear. No storm clouds clogged the light as they had yesterday. No one responded. Corpses of the townspeople remained where they were; shattered and lifeless. That wasn't what Kier was interested in, however.

"Where are you?!" He shouted again. There was no sign of the spiritfolk who had stayed with him through the night. He was completely alone.

Kinir's silence suffocated him.

 

* * *

 

It was a couple of days before he'd managed to work up the courage to go near a body. Kier had managed to feed himself from the food he'd found in the empty houses (empty of life, not of corpses) so he had no need to go around rifling for keys and such, but the sun had shone straight and a sickening smell had started emanating, stifling his breath.

His uncle was the first one he approached. The first one he really cared to find, really; although his father's may have seemed more important, Kier knew that he wasn't going to make it back easily to their home, no matter if the dark spiritfolk had since disappeared with that first rising sun.

With a sigh and small arms, he began making a pile. There were shovels, but the 11-year old knew his own strength, and he doubted he could make a grave for everyone on the island before it would stop mattering. They were all set in a clearing, long away from any widly inflammable flora, and as Kier finished scouring the island for any more remains, he set a pyre.

Attending a funeral had never been something he'd thought would happen. Death was a known concept, but it had only been him, his father, and his uncle that he could remember, so all the loss he had ever felt was recent. The fact that it wasn't just a family member but all the people on Kinir also made him falter. He didn't really know anyone else well enough to say anything even to himself, but just a word for a family member felt wrong, so he kept silent.

 

* * *

 

The days, weeks all blurred together. Kier had sailed down to Ishir, then went up to Tesir, and repeated the process all over there. He couldn't find his dad's body. He tried not to think of it.

He set up a relatively comfortable home base on Ishir, a house a bit secluded from the rest of the town, close enough to pretend he had civilisation to visit but far enough that he didn't have to face the loneliness of it all head on. Instead, Kier threw himself even more into his inventions than he had before - without his dad or uncle or other islanders here to deter him, his work grew wild and even more messy than before. He'd taken to doing his experiments outside after he had to spend half a day trying to stop his house from burning down.

It was an easy schedule. Alone and keeping himself busy enough to not fall into boredom. Exploration was now on the table - beforehand when he'd wander around on the islands, people would say "Kier you can't just walk on private land, Kier you trampled all over my flowers, Kier you nearly set my house on fire get that thing away" but now he was free to scramble about as much as he wanted. He'd even gone up by Talthir once; he'd packed his rucksack with supplies (mainly trilmix) and had sailed around, slightly frightened when the boat had gone near Azhel and the prison. Talthir had had a similar situation, but with it not being as easy to get to as the other islands, there were no corpses to be disposed of. The buildings there seemed even more dilapidated and ruined then the intentionally destroyed ones of the other islands, and the quietness there seemed even more unnatural than the rest on the island.

He'd stayed a few days, and seemingly content with what he'd found, left the island. Kier didn't plan on coming back again. The air in the place and near the Nine Shrines didn't agree with his temperament.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes he felt like he was being watched - that when he'd turn, he'd see a figure gazing at him from the distance. There was no one there, though. There never was. It was always just quiet.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't until quite some time later that he finally had contact with other people. With everyone gone, Kier'd had trouble keeping track of the dates, which had upset him a little with regards to his birthday. However, when he realised no one was around to celebrate it with him, the thought left his mind.

He had estimated it to be around one and a half or two years, though. A long time for a child, spending about a fifth of your life alone, scrounging over what was left and having to supply yourself.

The first time seeing another living (?) being after that night came on a "spring" day - Kier didn't quite know if it was spring or not, but the while beforehand had been quite cold, so he supposed it might as well have been. He was the only one keeping time around the isles - indeed in the entire world, for all he knew.

One of the things with living alone on a select few islands was that everything else was so cut off. Kier knew from what his dad had told him that he'd come to Grius when he was a baby, that he hadn't been born there, but it was the only place he ever knew. Other lands he'd read about, other types of people - all things he'd never seen, and as far as he knew, thing he would never /get/ to see.

No ships had ever been sighted on the horizon; nothing in the sea aside from the myriad shoals living in and around the islands. Kier's entire world had consisted of just himself for years.

When he finally met another person, it didn't go well.

 

* * *

 

"They're really gone, huh?"

Kier sat up, from where he'd been reclining in the branches of a tree, fiddling with a small cube. That was a voice, he was certain, not another auditory hallucination - he felt proud and adult for knowing those words - and he stuck his head through the leaves, trying to locate the source.

"Finally," another voice said. This one - this one was different, Kier noted excitedly. Two people! "I wonder how long though. Everything seemed dusty when we found the dock."

The voices came from a path that led by the village in Ishir, and were approaching him. He almost leapt down to greet them, but froze as the owners came into view. They weren't human.

Two spiritfolk, one a dark-skinned woman with catlike ears, and one a taller person with colourful feathers adorning their head, were walking down the way. They continued their conversation as Kier inspected them from his vantage point up in the trees.

Spiritfolk! He thought excitedly. He watched them walk onward, paying no heed to what they were saying with the gears turning rapidly in his head. The islands used to be inhabited by spiritfolk before it was claimed by Alaran, he remembered. Maybe these spiritfolk were coming back to the island to live here?

Kier scrambled down the branches, trying not to alert anyone else who might have been in the vicinity, and legged it back towards his house. The two he saw hadn't come this way - they had branched off, going towards the route to Tesir instead. Rushing in through the door, he dove into his inventions and tried finding a suitable one for the spiritfolk. His dad had told him that they were protectors; that he should always pay his respects. Kier had seen that proof first hand.

Picking up one of his devices, he inspected it carefully and deemed it alright enough to use as tribute. He carefully popped it into his satchel, and headed back towards the village. With any luck, he thought, those either wouldn't be the only spiritfolk returning or they would come back later in the night or the next day. When he reached the buildings, he saw that the town hall's - or at least the one he'd assumed was the town hall, he'd never really been in there much beforehand - door had been opened, and through the unshuttered windows could see several figures moving inside. Noise was emanating from the building. Inwardly gasping with joy, Kier moved forward and placed his device near the entrance. Surely, he thought, these spiritfolk would see how useful it was and by extension how useful _he_  was, and would be nice to him and talk to him and not make him be so secluded anymore.

Things did not go as planned.

 

* * *

 

So, these are the eat-your-face spiritfolk, Kier thought, as he ran from the cries and stones launched at him by the people. He hadn't meant for his invention to explode; they just had a tendency of doing that. It wasn't as though the spiritfolk had allowed him to explain himself either. As soon as they saw what had happened and saw what he was, they yelled and cursed at him and tried to ward him away from them.

Kier didn't want to acknowledge the wetness growing in his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few months, more and more spiritfolk came and settled down on the islands. Kier had managed to speak to some of them, but they turned their noses up at him or shouted whenever they saw any of his tools or devices.

It wasn't just Ishir - when he'd gone up to Tesir and Kinir, he saw more spiritfolk mulling about there. The well near where his old house was now seemed occupied; a fish-like person had claimed it, and had come up to yell at Kier when he'd flicked a coin into it like old times. He yelled less than the others though, and for that Kier was glad.

Kyl'il, on the other hand, was pleasant-adjacent, but had taken a near-immediate disliking to him, and now launched fireballs at him whenever he came near. You accidentally set a woman's flowers on fire once, and then nearly cover her in uninflammable foam which might've hurt her, and suddenly you're a "menace". Kier didn't understand it at all.

Even with the majority of his interactions now seemed to be mutual yelling, it was still better than before, he mused to himself often. The now-15 year old, 4 years after he'd been left alive and alone, now had "people" to "talk" to - being yelled at was still being acknowledged.

One of Kier's main issues was still at hand though; with all the people he'd managed to interact with calmly or more than around 2 minutes had claimed they'd never heard of a spiritfolk like the one he'd described from that night. If not for the fact that he would surely be dead if it hadn't been with him, and the fact that the events of that night had been seared with perfect clarity into his mind, Kier would've begun to doubt whether or not they truly existed.

 

* * *

 

It was a strange sort of life, he thought one night. Kier's hair had just been shortened and singed again though mixing some things which in hindsights he shouldn't have touched.  
"The only human," he said aloud, laying on the warm grass outside his house. The night was clear again. He still had trouble sleeping on those nights. "I'm the only human I know."  
The moon hadn't risen that far up in the sky yet; it wasn't late yet. He could hear noise coming from the village, muted along the sea breeze. It calmed him.

 

* * *

 

There wasn't as much silence any more.

 

* * *

 

Fifteen years later, there would never be silence again.

**Author's Note:**

> me? corny? never  
> i wasn't really sure where i was going with this fic to be honest - i just rewatched the shrouded isles arcs and cried about kyr for like, an hour, and then wrote this immediately after  
> also kyrs dad sucks  
> also also i realised how ominous the last line sounded i just meant that nine shrines adventures and dines are so loud they never shut up


End file.
